EDITORIAL: Ticket perks for the privileged

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. _ Unless you've been on Mars, everyone knows how scarce tickets were to Monday's BCS national title game between Auburn and Oregon.

Tickets were available, but at a very premium price. Even nosebleed seats were $1,500 apiece. Other tickets rose to $4,000 and $5,000 in the final days, with some prime seats going for more than $10,000.

Not if you were an Alabama legislator. Auburn made special allowances for state lawmakers to buy tickets at face value of $300 to $325 a piece. Thirteen legislators and two state employees took advantage of this perk, including two Madison County lawmakers.

State Sen. Clay Scofield, R-Arab, and Rep. Mac McCutcheon, R-Capshaw, each purchased four tickets under a special arrangement that put public officials on a ticket priority list.

Was it illegal? No. Was it ethical for lawmakers to take advantage of it? It certainly doesn't seem to be in keeping with the spirit of the state's new ethics laws.

Scofield, a third generation farmer and a 2003 graduate of Auburn University, said he would have gotten tickets no matter what since his family has been a longtime supporter of the university, including the donation of vehicles through his family's auto business.

Well, then why didn't he just use those family connections? The priority list went mostly by the level of donor giving. The majority of ticket-seekers entered a lottery or had to resort to the open market, which charged astronomical prices.

McCutcheon, an Auburn alumni and a Planning Department employee for the City of Huntsville, also used his status as a legislator to get four tickets through the university at face value. McCutcheon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the issue.

The paradox to all this is that legislators, with support from Scofield and McCutcheon, overwhelmingly approved a tough package of ethics and campaign finance reform bills just last month designed to end special interest influence-peddling in Montgomery.

If lawmakers use their position to get special privileges for athletic tickets, what's to say they won't accept other favors from interests they regulate and approve budgets for?

Jim Metrock, a Birmingham charity activist who has crusaded against football tickets for public officials, called the bargain ticket solicitation a "shakedown."

"There is an open, implied threat when a legislator, who votes on Auburn funding, asks Auburn for expensive tickets. 'You don't want to make me mad, do you?' is what was unsaid but communicated," Metrock told The Times Thursday.